


Extra Frosting

by latestillusion



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Affectionate Insults, Antagonism, Background Relationships, Enemies to Friends, Gen, Star Trek: Into Darkness Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-26 18:18:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19773757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/latestillusion/pseuds/latestillusion
Summary: Hendorff says, “I’m thinking you might not remember how we met.”  He tries to not sound wounded.And he tries not to feel weirdly cheered up by Kirk’s gaze darting up at him and Kirk saying, “Uh, no,Cupcake, I’m pretty sure I do.”Okay, he’s out of diplomacy.  “Why the hell would you want a Chief of Security who beat the shit out of you?”





	Extra Frosting

Look, he’s a realistic guy. He knows that the beatdown he gave Kirk’s nothing compared to what Spock gave him on the bridge or what the Romulans gave him on the _Narada_ ; compared to all that, Hendorff might as well have flogged him with a fucking dandelion. He’s not making Kirk’s list of top five badass motherfuckers. He gets that.

But all the same, it’s a little hurtful that Kirk seems to have completely forgotten about him.

That fucker wouldn’t even be in Starfleet if Hendorff hadn’t kicked his ass. Yeah. You’re welcome, Earth.

Still, he’s gotta be diplomatic about bringing it up. Kirk has leapfrogged over every single fucking protocol on the books to become captain, because he’s a hero (he’s still a dick) and there’s an enormous power vacuum (because half the people Hendorff knew at the Academy are dead now), and the asshole who looked like some kind of fucked-up walrus with napkins hanging out of his nose is now, unbelievably, capable of getting him busted back down to ensign. So Hendorff is polite.

“You requested to keep me on as Chief of Security,” Hendorff says.

“Yeah.” Kirk, pretty boy Kirk, looks, surprisingly, like what he is, looks like someone who got promoted way over his head, i.e., someone who can’t currently differentiate his ass from his elbow and hasn’t slept in a week. He’s searching for something on his rabbit warren of a PADD desk, zooming files back and forth across the screen. Hendorff counts four discarded caffeine supplement bottles littering the floor: Kirk probably has no idea who he’s even talking to right now.

Hendorff says, “I’m thinking you might not remember how we met.” He tries to not sound wounded.

And he tries not to feel weirdly cheered up by Kirk’s gaze darting up at him and Kirk saying, “Uh, no, _Cupcake_ , I’m pretty sure I do.”

Okay, he’s out of diplomacy. “Why the hell would you want a Chief of Security who beat the shit out of you?”

“First of all, you didn’t _beat the shit out of me_ , come on, I totally held my own.”

“No, you didn’t. You got your ass kicked.”

“You had like four other guys with you! That’s not a fair fight.”

Says the guy who cheated on the Kobayashi Maru—but Hendorff doesn’t say that. He’s remembering that night, in that stupid hick bar where the air smelled like peanuts and beer and fighting was something you did for fun.

Kirk studies him and scrubs a hand across his face. He doesn’t manage to wipe any of the exhaustion out of his expression. “I don’t see any point in hiring a Chief of Security who _can’t_ kick my ass. You’re supposed to be able to fight better than me, Cupcake. Or never mind me, actually—you’re supposed to be able to fight better than whoever we’re up against. So the people on your team make it out alive.” He smiles. The fucker _knows_ he has a great smile. He can flirt with plywood. “Besides, if I went around ruling people out because they wanted to beat the shit out of me, I wouldn’t be able to hire anybody.”

That kinda checks out. Dr. McCoy looks like the closest thing Kirk has to a buddy, and even that guy’s always yelling at him about something.

Okay. As long as they’re all on the same page.

“All right, Captain.”

Kirk says quietly, “The other guys you were with that night, did they—”

Hendorff knows what he’s asking. He shakes his head. Negative. They all died above Vulcan, with not even enough left of any of them to make for a real burial.

“I’m sorry. Just you, me, and Uhura now, I guess.”

Kirk’s full attention is a weird thing to have, like a spotlight pinning him down, making his face hot. Hendorff says, “And Pike. You got him back.” He doesn’t say it because it’s all the same to him—he likes Pike fine, but his dead friends, Mickey and Horowitz and Ro, were _his_ , he knew them down to the mole on Ro’s elbow and the smell of that fucking watermelon chewing gum Horowitz always had in his cheek and the stale yellow color of Mickey’s gym socks. He wishes Kirk saved them instead of Pike. Wish in one hand and shit in the other.

But Pike bailed Kirk out of that dive. It probably means a little to Kirk, getting to return the favor.

Kirk sort of half-closes his eyes. He’s got pretty eyelashes, like that’s something Hendorff wants to be noticing. “Yeah. Pike too.”

He doubts there’s any point to him hanging around here. He feels itchy and weird in brass quarters anyway—everything smells like air freshener. He says he’ll see Kirk on the ship and he gets out of there.

He thinks it’s Kirk’s bad luck to have already gotten a cushy room assignment; fucking Starfleet and its batshit priorities, moving golden boy from the dorms to here when he’s going to be shipping out in another couple of days anyway. Kirk could use a roommate right now to toss his caffeine pills out the window and make him go the fuck to sleep. Maybe McCoy will swing by and bug him into it. Not that it’s any of Hendorff’s business.

*

Eventually Hendorff starts to think that Kirk really hired him as some kind of fucked-up long-term revenge, because the guy is Security’s worst nightmare.

Every week, Hendorff files a formal recommendation that basically boils down to, _Stop joining the landing party on hazardous planets when you don’t have to, dipshit._ And every week, Kirk says he’ll take that under advisement. Yeah, Hendorff will believe that when he sees it.

Once he even talks Commander Spock into co-signing the damn report.

And that’s another thing:

That Spock is on the ship at all is another thing that gives Hendorff a perpetual headache. Tell him _one other_ Chief of Security who has to deal with his Captain’s _attempted murderer_ strolling around the bridge all the time. Hendorff can buy that Kirk’s fucked-up enough in the head to see their own barfight as a weird kind of job interview, but there’s no way that makes sense for picking a First Officer.

And yet Spock is, bizarrely, kind of his ally in this whole clusterfuck. Maybe it takes throttling Kirk into the ground to really absorb that the guy couldn’t win a fight with a tribble.

“You would like me to formally second your request for the Captain to alter his behavior patterns?”

“Yeah.” He can’t bring himself to use profanity around a Vulcan; it’s too much like cursing in front of his grandparents, so it takes him a little longer to figure out what to say. “He takes way more risks than somebody in his position should. It’s like he has a gift for coming back injured. It’s our job to look after him, and he’s always overriding any protection orders on him and going off on his own.”

“Your assessment is accurate,” Spock concedes. “However, you are discounting Captain Kirk’s exceptional skill at ignoring logical advice given to him for his personal safety. Even with my cooperation, this tactic will fail, as all your tactics have in the past.”

That’s pretty harsh, but Hendorff tries not to take it personally. He’s been on the ship long enough to know that being a little bit of a dick is basically Spock’s hobby.

He shrugs. “I’m open to suggestions.”

“I am unsure.” Spock has a little furrow between his eyebrows, which is probably the Vulcan equivalent of sobbing in frustration. “As I said, he is persistently indifferent to his own well-being, but it is possible another approach may have more effect. Is your team getting unnecessarily injured because of the Captain’s actions?”

Hendorff shakes his head. “Anytime he’s doing something he knows is a bad idea, he sends them off. They’re not getting hurt, they’re just getting frustrated.”

Because against all odds, Kirk is _popular_. Half of Hendorff’s team probably have his picture as their PADD backgrounds and spend their off-hours making fucking kissy faces at it; they take it personally when that idiot gets so much as a papercut. They’re all blue-balled with frustrated protective instincts. The other day Hendorff heard one of them longingly speculating about whether or not Kirk would let him take his bowl of soup out of the replicator so he could protect Kirk’s fingers from getting burned. If the guy’s not careful, he’s gonna have a dozen red-shirted babysitters roaming his ship, throwing themselves in front of anybody who so much looks like they might sneeze on him.

Hey.

“Actually,” he says slowly, “I think I got something.”

So in the end, he writes a report to Kirk that basically says, _Stop sending your security team away, you asshole, they’re all getting depressed and clingy about you_ , and Spock co-signs it and shoves it under the Captain’s nose.

He figures Kirk won’t want a bunch of morose, lovestruck Security officers on his hands, so he’ll at least stop overriding Hendorff’s orders and let them do their fucking jobs. Instead, Kirk apparently decides that the last people he wants to put in danger are trained professionals who literally volunteered for it, so when he can’t ditch his security team anymore, he drastically tones down the amount of dangerous shit he gets into.

Kirk’s a fucking lunatic, but Hendorff figures there are worse commands to be under.

*

Kirk does get him laid one time. To be fair, it’s probably because Kirk’s shore leaves are a constant deluge of pussy and cock and alien genitalia Hendorff’s never even been lucky enough to lay eyes on, and Kirk is, despite his reputation, actually pretty picky. He’s gotta divert the excess offers somewhere. Eventually he almost _has_ to wingman one of them Hendorff’s way, just by the law of averages, but shit, it’s still decent of him.

The score in question is with this cute little twink with white-blond hair and silver eyeliner. His name is Ash and he’s a navigator on a mercantile ship and he’s the most edible fucking thing Hendorff has ever seen.

They’re in a bar that caters to crews on shore leave, and most everybody is drunk and smelly. Ash is like a little crystal figurine. Kirk, who probably meant to sit down next to somebody else, catches Hendorff looking.

“Your type, Cupcake?”

“We’re off-duty, Captain,” Hendorff says. He can feel his face burning. “I can tell you to shut up.”

“Yeah. You can also beat the crap out of me. We’ve established this. But seriously—”

Kirk can look so idiotically disingenuous sometimes. Hendorff thinks it’s the eyes.

“Yeah,” he mumbles into his beer. “He’s exactly my fucking type.”

“I’ve got you, buddy,” Kirk says, and he whacks Hendorff on the back as he stands up.

He makes a beeline for Ash and Hendorff thinks for an incredulous second that he’s just gonna have to watch while James T. Kirk scores with yet another babe right in front of him, and the only consolation in his whole life is that he got to see Uhura shut Kirk down flat the first time they met. But then Kirk comes back over and brings Ash with him. And just when Hendorff is starting to think Kirk is actually being unprecedentedly chill about this whole thing, Kirk introduces him—of course—as Cupcake.

It clearly throws Ash, but only for a second. They work in space. You get a lot of weird names.

Kirk talks Hendorff up like it’s his fucking _job_ to make sure Ash leaves the bar with him. Hendorff is the best Chief of Security in the whole damn fleet, he’s saved more lives than a clown car full of doctors, he’s a badass in hand-to-hand combat, he’s practically Prince Charming.

It’s kind of overkill. Coming from Kirk, that’s not much of a surprise.

Luckily, Ash is amused by it. “You sound like the total package.” There’s a little playful twist on the last word.

Hendorff goes for modesty. “Don’t I,” he says, in a deadpan he stole off Commander Spock. “He’s overselling it.”

“Well, I still like the product,” Ash says. He leans forward, touching Hendorff’s bicep. He turns his head back to Kirk. “With that kind of high praise, though, Captain Kirk, you have to know you sound like you want a bite of all this yourself.”

Kirk shrugs, smiling. “Let me tell you about the ways the regulations against crew fraternization have ruined my love life, seriously. It’s depressing. But I’ll say this—I wasn’t in Starfleet when I met Cupcake here. No regs at all.”

Ash grins. His fingers twitch on Hendorff’s arm. “Yeah?”

Kirk lowers his voice. “Yeah. Why do you think I call him Cupcake?”

Hendorff really wishes he knew where this was going.

Ash raises his eyebrows, inviting the answer.

Kirk touches the tip of his tongue to his lips. “Because he just tastes so sweet.”

It’s the best fucking shore leave of Hendorff’s entire career. He and Ash trade communicator codes afterwards; there’s something seriously magical there. He practically floats back to the _Enterprise_.

“You,” he says to Kirk, “are the best captain ever.” He’s gonna regret saying it, he knows that, no matter how heartfelt it is in the moment, but fuck it.

Kirk says, “Aww, Cupcake, I bet you say that to all the boys.”

*

Then Kirk dies.

Kirk _dies_ , and Commander Spock goes off to kung fu Khan’s ass, and Hendorff should be there with him, but he’s got a hunch Spock would rip the arms off anybody who tried to kill Khan before he could. And Hendorff’s a tough guy, but he’s got nothing on an enraged, territorial Vulcan. He knows that. He starts getting drunk instead.

He’s the Chief of Security. His Captain died _on_ _his ship_. That’s such a career low that he should probably just stay out of the way in general. He feels like shit—like shit somebody’s _stepped_ in, even. Lower than dirt.

Feeling guilty doesn’t make sense, he knows that. What was he supposed to do, throw himself in front of a bunch of radiation? He would have taken a phaser bolt to the chest for Kirk any day of the week and not—he can admit this now—because of the job. Fuck the job. He just got protective of that asshole somewhere along the line. That drunk, mouthy townie turned out to be the best boss Hendorff ever had, the beating fucking heart of the _Enterprise_ , and now that he’s gone, Hendorff doesn’t know what to do.

He needs to message Ash and tell him that the guy who introduced them just—

Uhura passes by his open door, a red blur, and then backtracks, coming inside. She’s making a horrible hiccupping sound. Her eyes are wet and red-rimmed. At first, Hendorff thinks she’s sobbing, and he gets up to hug her.

She shakes against him, her shoulders jerking uncontrollably, and he realizes that she’s _laughing_.

Well, grief hits people in weird ways. Hendorff is a drinker, Commander Spock whales on things until he feels better, Uhura apparently gets the giggles.

“He’s _alive_ ,” Uhura says.

Hendorff pulls back. “Spock?” That’s the only person he can think of. So Spock went toe-to-toe with Khan and came out the winner. Good for him.

“No. I mean, yes, but—Kirk’s alive.”

“He’s definitely dead,” Hendorff says. He knows that’s not the most tactful way to drive that point home, but he’s not used to having his head screwed on tighter than Uhura’s. “He had, like, massive radiation poisoning. Dr. McCoy pronounced him. He’s dead, he’s _been_ dead—”

“He was dead,” Uhura says, “but then McCoy shot him up with some of Khan’s blood because we got Spock to take Khan alive, and now he’s _alive again_.”

His eyes suddenly sting with tears of relief. “You’re kidding me.”

She shakes her head, her ponytail swishing exuberantly back and forth. She’s smiling ear to ear. “They’re going to announce it on shipwide comms soon.”

He can’t believe he was just sitting around moping about Kirk being dead and Kirk has turned out to be too much of a dick to even _stay_ dead like a _normal_ person. His face hurts. He’s probably got that same fucking smile Uhura has.

*

When Kirk’s awake again, Hendorff doesn’t visit him, because they’re not _friends_ , dammit.

But he does send cupcakes.


End file.
